Page - 126 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:1

126 | www.limina-graz.eu hande Birkalan-Gedik | muslim | martyr | masculine such as Saint Valentine or Saint Apollonia. I will turn to this issue, that is the absence of female martyrs in Islam, in the corresponding sub-section. For now, let me highlight an important nuance: What is interesting about this new version of nationalism with respect to martyrdom is that, while it seems that the decision-makers of the AKP tried to expand their discourses on women, they are stuck with familial discourses, even though they want- ed to turn the 15 July into a Day of Independence, drawing references to the Turkish War of Independence. However, on its first anniversary, the 15 July became a day of commemoration. It was declared a bank holiday to embed its commemoration in the Turkish national calendar. Just to further the familial discourses of the AKP, it should be noted that the AKP’s gender policies rely on such discourses. So it should not be sur- prising that the AKP is following same suit, with some clever maneuvering: While the AKP did not fully embrace female martyrdom in Islam, they gave women a place as “mothers,” “sisters” and “wives.” All those who died on the night of the “attempted coup” were declared as “martyrs” by the president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, not by the Presidency’s Religious Affairs. On this night, there were nine women among 250 people who died. Now, a simple math would reveal the following results: Five women out of the nine who were declared as martyrs, belonged to the police force. Therefore, their martyrdom has to do with being in the police force and being killed under duty, more than them being women and being identified as female mar- tyrs. There are still only four women remaining: two women who joined the crowd with their families, and one going out to the street to die. One woman was said to be an Alevi and a worker at the canteen of a state office and was killed at work. Three women out of 250 is not many, and all in all, although presenting an Islamic patriarchal perspective, the example of the AKP re- veals the masculine bias in the definition of martyrdom, if one remembers the word of Erdoğan, who did not distinguish men and women as men and women, but called them as his “kardeş” (sibling).10 What Happened on 15 July 2016? In this section, I examine the discourses of martyrdom, gender, and the military in the AKP’s new nationalism on the example of 15 July 2016 in detail. According to government sources, the hidden force behind the coup was Fethullah Gülen, known as the leader of the transnational Islamic Gül- en movement, who was based in Pennsylvania, U.S., and whose activities 10 https://15temmuzsehitleri.com/ tr/sehitlerimiz-111 [accessed on 1  March 2019].